In its ruling in Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, the Supreme Court found that an unaccepted offer of judgment made under Federal Rule 68 does not moot a plaintiff’s claim. But the Court expressly left open the possibility that actually tendering funds to an individual plaintiff could moot the claims. Two circuit courts, however, have recently found that a tender cannot moot the claims, with rulings in Fulton Dental LLC. v. Bisco Inc. and Radha Geismann, M.D. PC v. ZocDoc Inc. Continue reading »

On February 14, 2019, the FCC’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau released its first report on illegal robocalls (“the Robocall Report”) to address the “onslaught of unwanted calls that has led a lot of consumers to stop answering the phone altogether.” This report is compiled based on data points from more than forty comments submitted by voice service providers, trade associations, analytics companies, and consumers. The Robocall Report provided summary analysis on the following issues:

Since Chairman Ajit Pai took office, combatting illegal robocalls and malicious spoofing has become the FCC’s top consumer protection priority. In anticipation of yesterday’s Open Commission Meeting, Chairman Pai issued another press release on Wednesday, calling for “a robust caller authentication system to combat illegal caller ID spoofing” and criticizing carriers that lacked commitment to deploy the SHAKEN/STIR framework by the end of 2019. Between Chairman Pai’s 2018 demands that the FCC make real progress in call authentication and yesterday’s Open Meeting to vote on its draft Proposed Rulemaking to amend existing Truth in Caller ID Rules, Chairman Pai solicited details from several large telecommunications carriers about their caller ID authentication plans. These carriers’ submissions are available here.Continue reading »

Plaintiffs often employ the spaghetti-against-the-wall tactic of asserting every conceivable claim against every conceivable defendant. But as a recent decision from the Southern District of California confirms, this strategy is not without risk.

The FCC’s TCPA dockets can be among the agency’s most active, with intermittent waves of petitions filed, followed by releases of public notices seeking comments on petitions for declaratory rulings or clarifications of FCC rules. It can be difficult to track down TCPA items in the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System. But fear not: the Drinker Biddle TCPA team has put together this tracker chart to help our readers locate pending TCPA petitions and associated public notices. The chart is organized by issue and contains brief summaries of the requests made by petitioners. It does not include petitions for reconsideration of the FCC’s July 2015 omnibus order.

The Northern District of California recently granted summary judgment dismissing a plaintiff’s TCPA claim based on text messages that confirmed plaintiff’s hotel reservations and encouraged him to download defendant’s app. Phan v. Agoda Co. Pte. Ltd., No. 16-CV-07243-BLF, 2018 WL 6591800 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 13, 2018). The case turned on whether the texts constituted advertising or telemarketing—thus requiring plaintiff’s prior express written consent. After considering “[b]oth the context and the content of the messages,” the court held that the texts were neither advertising nor telemarketing, and granted summary judgment in defendant’s favor because it was undisputed that plaintiff had given the requisite consent for informational or transactional texts. Continue reading »

Last week, the Eastern District of North Carolina denied a TCPA defendant’s personal jurisdiction challenge, finding unpersuasive its argument that it did not purposefully avail itself of the protections of North Carolina law because it did not intentionally make phone calls to Plaintiff in North Carolina. SeeHicks v. Houston Baptist Univ., No. 5:17-CV-629-FL, 2019 WL 96219, at *4–5 (E.D.N.C. Jan. 3, 2019). Continue reading »

The FCC has announced its intention to take another step in combatting fraudulent robocalls by amending its Truth in Caller ID rules to extend to communications originating from outside the United States, as well as expanding the scope of covered communications services to include text messages and additional voice services. Specifically, in anticipation of its scheduled January 30, 2019 Open Meeting, the FCC, just prior to its shutdown on January 3, 2019, released a draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which would implement new FCC rules and definitions designed to deter malicious caller identification spoofing. The proposed rules are intended to update current FCC Truth in Caller ID rules to reflect Congress’ recent enactment of Section 503 of the RAY BAUM’S Act that modified section 227(e) of the Communications Act as well as to “expand and clarify the prohibition on misleading or inaccurate caller identification information.” Continue reading »

With the D.C. Circuit’s decisions in ACA International and Bais Yaakov and the FCC’s December 2018 order kicking off the creation a national reassigned phone numbers database, businesses are understandably happy with the recent direction in TCPA litigation and regulations and optimistic that the FCC will soon issue an order addressing other issues presented in the ACA International decision, once the partial government shutdown ends. Nevertheless, litigation continues, and as discussed at our November conference (The TCPA in 2018: There and Back Again), significant challenges remain: the 9th Circuit’s decision in Marks, the potential for the Supreme Court to upend the regulatory landscape via PDR Network, and the political difficulties of amending the TCPA. Laura, Justin, and Marsha will discuss these topics and more.

For more information about the conference, please visit the COHEAO website.

TCPA Blog contributor Michael Daly is quoted in the January 1, 2019, edition of Law360 in an article titled “Cybersecurity & Privacy Policy To Watch In 2019.” The article provides an overview of the current issues and details of federal, state and international interventions to watch. Continue reading »

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